People
love to watch conspiracies on television and to watch
movies about conspiracies; the silver screen and all of
its children have long been the breeding ground for conspiracy
theories both mundane and bizarre. Theories/stories like
“who shot JFK’ have become legend and few
except the very young could actually say they haven’t
seen something on TV about the subject. Naturally humans
are interested by a good mystery, but unfortunately most
of the most famous conspiracies (some now mere urban legends)
will never be solved. While most television producers
and X-Files fans have little problem with this, there
are many who seek to realistically shed some light on
what could be a very real and very illegal criminal activity.

The word conspiracy comes from two Latin words which
literally mean “to breath together”,
which infers that two people who are about to partake
on a conspiracy are doing a lot of close talking
and whispering. Most legal systems define a conspiracy
as simply two or more people deliberately and intelligently
going out to commit a crime. While killing a president
or head of state (i.e. JFK) is a crime, hiding aliens
is not… but denying the public the truth (depending
on the law of the nation in question) could therefore
be thought of as a conspiracy. When it comes to
things like this people usually expect the worst,
but in the end aliens do not appear and we all go
back to watching another channel.

Whenever I hear about a new conspiracy I think of the
words of Henry Kissinger who said something along the
lines of “don’t look for a conspiracy when
simple incompetence will do”. Henry Kissinger is
described by many as one of the most intelligent people
on the planet and as far as I am concerned his “simple
incompetence” quote is one of the smartest things
he has ever said. Anyone who has crafted a good monster
movie knows that a monster the audience CAN’T see
is scarier that a monster that audience CAN see, and a
good director will let his audience spend their time imagining
all sorts of horrible things in their head and save his
beastie-money-shot until later in the movie. Look closer
and all you might find is nothing more than a disgruntled
civil servant.

That being
said, Henry Kissinger’s “simple incompetence”
theory is more than mildly ironic considering that he
did a lot of shifty things during his political career.
For instance there is the secret bombing of Cambodia,
the supposed assassination of Chilean Presedent Allende,
and the slaughter in East Timour. Kissinger has a reputation
for enjoying Cloke And Dagger politics and using his
own brand of isdirection and shrewd calculation he became
one of the most powerful men in the world. Since leaving
office in
1976 he has been keeping a low profile. The 21st Century
has seen Kissinger plauged with legal problems, with
many countires around the world turning up the heat.
Countries that have wanted to question or detain him
include Chile, France, Brazil, and finally the USA.
Kissinger’s public appearences
are often plauged with protesters, and people are starting
to ask more questions about what their governments are
capable of with such men running the country.

Of course
Henry Kissinger did do many positive things, such as
openeing up relations with China, negotiated the end
to the Yom Kippur War, and Kissinger pioneered the policy
of détente with the Soviet Union. Despite this
Kissinger admits himself that governments are duplicitous
by nature and
that any thought to the contrary would be naïve;
as one of the few people who came out of the Watergate
scandal untouched, who knows how much “close talking”
Kissinger had to do.

In the end when we talk of conspiracies one must separate
fiction from fact. A person is innocent until proven
guilty in a court of law, and to randomly assign guilt
or suspicion without proof is doing little more than
spreading rumours. We all want to know if there are
aliens, but in then end we might just have to wait for
the truth to surface. It is important to know that you
have the right to know what is going on is you feel
that it might compromise your safety or liberty, but
spreading panic isn’t very constructive. Most
conspiracies are solved after years of painstaking research.
To illistare my point here is a good wikiquote: “Outside
the realm of law, it is common for person(s) with some
grievance to promote conspiracy theories—claims
that some other group is involved in a conspiracy to
promote some nefarious (and usually self-serving) end.
Often times, the alleged conspirators are not identified
with any specificity, and may include ethnic groups
(e.g., Jews), or socioeconomic classes (e.g., the rich).
Many such theories are advanced with scant evidence
(or none at all); in many cases what evidence is advanced
is circumstantial in nature. In extreme cases, evidence
contrary to the conspiracy theory is assumed to have
been planted by the conspirators.”